61. The Creation of the Angels

1. Angels are creatures. They exist, not by necessity, but by having existence given to them. That is, they have existence by participation. Now, what has existence by participation receives this existence from that which has existence by its own essence. Only God exists by his own essence. Therefore, angels have their existence from God; they are created.

2. God alone exists from eternity. He creates things by producing them from nothing. Creatures exist after they were nonexistent. Hence angels do not exist from eternity.

3. It seems most likely that angels and the bodily world were created at the same time, not angels first (as a kind of independent world of spirits) and the bodily world afterwards. Angels are part of the universe, and no part is perfect if it be entirely severed from the whole, the totality, to which it belongs.

4. The angels were created in heaven. And it is fitting that creatures of the most perfect nature should be created in the most noble place.

"Those who love God are always happy, because their whole happiness is to fulfill, even in adversity, the will of God." St Alphonsus de Liguori

* * *

"The Lord has always revealed to mortals the treasures of his wisdom and his spirit, but now that the face of evil bares itself more and more, so does the Lord bare his treasures more." St John of the Cross, OCD - Doctor of the Church

* * *

"For what would it profit us to know the whole Bible by heart and the principles of all the philosophers if we live without grace and the love of God?" Thomas á Kempis